Title: Personal Narrative
Author: The Evergreen State College
Last saved by: Tony Zaragoza

Seeds of Change: Food, Culture, and Work
Fall 2007
Field Trip Reflection Assignment

Learning Objective: To reflect on a few key aspects of your learning on the field trip to the 
Yakima Valley.  
Due: Thursday, October 4, 3pm, in hard copy form, to seminar leader (under office door or in 
door envelope—see syllabus for our office addresses) or in faculty mailbox (Sem 2 A2117 for Tony or Alice; Lab 1 for Martha).
Format: 4 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12-point type, 1” margins, paginated, stapled 
(as always).

Week two, we will travel to the Yakima Valley, where we will explore various modes of agriculture, meet with workers, and learn about cultural forms that have emerged from a context of agricultural work.  You should prepare for this essay during the whole trip by taking good field notes at each encounter or event and jotting down further reflections, questions, and comments each evening back at camp (Sunday-Tuesday).  Since you have only Wednesday evening and Thursday to write this paper, we are asking you to select and develop a few pieces well, rather than giving an exhaustive account of everything that happened during our four-day experience.  We will have the opportunity to discuss the field trip as a whole, along with Isabel Valle’s Field of Toil, in seminar on Friday afternoon (October 5).

Your reflection on the field trip consists of two parts:

(1)	a detailed description of one encounter on the trip and analysis of what you learned from it (pages 1-2 of your paper).

(2)	a “laundry list” of substantive observations, questions, and comments from the experience as a whole (pages 3-4 of your paper).

For the description/analysis section, you should first recount in detail what took place during the specific encounter you’ve chosen as your focus: who was there, what content was conveyed, other significant aspects of the context that you picked up on, and anything else you’d like to say about what happened.  Then offer your own reflection on it: what questions and/or insights it stimulated for you, your reactions, what the encounter taught you, why you think it matters.

For the laundry list section, include those most essential things from the rest of the trip that you want to remember and/or pursue further.  Even though this is a list, you should express your thoughts using complete sentences, so that any reader could follow your thinking.  Offer the observations, questions, comments that are most important to you.  Again, you won’t have space in two pages to cover everything, so be selective. View this as an opportunity to consolidate some of your thinking about the trip in one document.

Remember to cite your sources in a list at the end; in most cases, you will simply name the person or people who offered the information, give the date, and list the encounter as an interview.  If you reference any of the websites or other fieldtrip materials, just include them on your list. Don’t worry for now about the citation format; we will cover MLA citation conventions in a later writing workshop.